No specific warrant required for collection of “external communications.”

According to newly published court testimony by a high-ranking British security official, bulk collection of social media posts from sites like Facebook, Google, and Twitter is permissible in the United Kingdom absent a specific warrant under British law, since such information constitutes “external communications.”

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In a 48-page declaration (PDF) by Charles Farr, director general of the UK’s Office for Security and Counterterrorism, the senior intelligence official defended the legality of the British government scooping up social media information en masse absent individual search warrants. The testimony was published Tuesday by advocacy organization Privacy International in relation to a suit challenging dragnet government surveillance in the UK.

Farr’s statement, which reveals the “secret government policy” underlying one of the government's clandestine warrantless bulk surveillance programs—codenamed TEMPORA—marks the first time the UK government has openly commented on its claimed legal justifications for indiscriminate communications interception, Privacy International noted in a press release.

The high-ranking official's statement comes in the wake of the torrent of global surveillance disclosures that stemmed from information leaked to journalists by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden in June 2013.

In his statement, Farr noted that under section 8(1) of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), while internal communications between UK residents are subject to an individualized search warrant requirement, “external communications,” such as social media postings, do not require a particularized search warrant. Instead, under section 8(4) of RIPA, such external communications may be monitored indiscriminately.

Farr continued to explain that when a message is placed on a “platform” like Facebook or Twitter that offers wide accessibility, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) treats the communication as being “not [between] any particular person who eventually reads the post or tweet, whose exact identity the person posting or tweeting cannot possibly know at the time the message is sent” but with “the platform itself, because the platform is both the repository for the message and the means by which it is broadcast..." As a result, a Facebook post or Tweet constitutes an "external communication" not subject to the warrant requirement.

The statement in question was transcribed during the government’s defense of its surveillance programs in a case brought by Privacy International, Amnesty International, and several other civil rights organizations against the GCHQ, Secret Intelligence Service, and the Security Service, challenging such warrantless monitoring. The case was brought before the UK’s Investigatory Powers Tribunal, an independent judicial body that hears complaints about surveillance by public entities.

"Intelligence agencies cannot be considered accountable to Parliament and to the public they serve when their actions are obfuscated through secret interpretations of byzantine laws," Eric King, deputy director of Privacy International, explained on Tuesday.

"British citizens will be alarmed to see their government justifying industrial-scale intrusion into their communications. The public should demand an end to this wholesale violation of their right to privacy,” noted Michael Bochenek, senior director of International Law and Policy at Amnesty International.